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The Debussy Problem: Debussy the Impressionist,the Neo-Impressionist, the SymbolistKatherine KnightWestern Kentucky University, katherine.knight652@topper.wku.edu

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Recommended CitationKnight, Katherine, "The Debussy Problem: Debussy the Impressionist, the Neo-Impressionist, the Symbolist" (2016). Honors CollegeCapstone Experience/Thesis Projects. Paper 603.http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/stu_hon_theses/603

THE DEBUSSY PROBLEM: DEBUSSY THE IMPRESSIONIST,

THE NEO-IMPRESSIONIST, THE SYMBOLIST

A Capstone Experience/Thesis Project

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Bachelor of Arts with

Honors College Graduate Distinction at Western Kentucky University

By

Katherine L. Knight

*****

Western Kentucky University

2016

CE/T Committee:

Approved By

Dr. Ingrid Cartwright, Advisor

Dr. Liza Kelly _______________________

Advisor

Dr. Audra Jennings Department of Art

Copyright By

Katherine L. Knight

2016

ii

ABSTRACT

Since the 19th century, many critics and scholars, both of music and the visual

arts, have debated about the place of Claude Debussy’s oeuvre in relation to the visual

arts movements that developed during his career. Attempts have been made in the

literature to label Debussy as Impressionist, as Neo-Impressionist, or as Symbolist, each

given exclusive ownership of his music by the author, leading one to ask: Why have

scholars and critics been so adamant about defining Debussy and his work, especially

along the lines of these visual movements?

The purpose of this research is to examine Debussy’s relationships to these

movements and to identify ways in which the ideals and the people of these movements

may have influenced his music. Through a visual analysis of specific works by Claude

Monet, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon and a musical analysis of selected art songs

across Debussy’s oeuvre, one sees that these attempts by scholars and critics to label

Debussy and his works fall short of fully characterizing him as an artist. Rather, Debussy

is better viewed as an artist who resisted such labels and blurred the boundaries between

art and music.

Keywords: Claude Debussy, Art History, Music, Interdisciplinary, 19th Century

iii

VITA

May 2, 1991 ……………………………………...... St. Petersburg, Florida

2009 …………………………………………….......Warren Central High School,

Bowling Green, Kentucky

2016………………………………………………... Western Kentucky University

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Fields: Music, Art History, and Anthropology

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii

Vita ..................................................................................................................................... iii

Chapters:

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

2. Impressionism and Monet ............................................................................................. 8

3. Neo-Impressionism and Seurat ................................................................................... 14

4. Symbolism and Redon ................................................................................................ 22

5. Discussion and Analysis ............................................................................................. 29

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 38

1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: THE DEBUSSY PROBLEM

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, Paris witnessed great and

swift change. Amidst the political and social upheaval of the Franco-Prussian War, the

collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire and the subsequent beginning of the Third

Republic, and the rebellion of the Paris Commune, the city experienced just as turbulent

changes within its cultural institutions. Musicians and visual artists alike began to

question the power of these institutions and the directions in which they could foresee

their respective art forms heading. For the visual arts, movements such as

Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Symbolism gradually gained ground as artists

allied themselves against the elite, government-controlled institutions in their search for

truth. Similarly, in music, musicians felt the strain of keeping with tradition as they

worked towards artistic innovation.

Of these musicians, Claude Debussy, the supposed “father” of Impressionist

music, was a composer with strong ideas about the meaning and role of music in the

world and the means with which one should or should not pursue to achieve his artistic

vision. Very independent and, at times, so very alone in his musical pursuits, Debussy

was still under the influence, however much, by the strong artistic currents that surged

around him, enough that one can spy some common ground between the composer an

2

his contemporaries in the rebellious visual art movements of the time in regard to

philosophy and practice, prompting critics to categorize Debussy and his works utilizing

existing terms, such as that of ‘Impressionism,’ already in use in the visual arts. Since

then, scholars have, too, journeyed along the same route, many times to be led to

frustration. Since then, attempts by scholars and critics to label and define Debussy as an

artist and the works he produced as Impressionist, Neo-Impressionist, and Symbolist, fall

short of fully characterizing him as an artist. Rather, Debussy is better viewed as an artist

who resisted such labels and blurred the boundaries of art. His style drew from multiple

and varied sources of inspiration, all of which share in common an opposition to the strict

parameters and narrow ideas of the Académie.

While producing a variety of work, Debussy and the visual artists of his time,

defied the rules of the governing artistic institutions while developing unique ways of

working. They focused on the importance of how they approached their work and the

development of unique philosophies that would lead to a specific type of work, all while

managing marginal roles within society, relationships with their respective mainstream

institutions, and ongoing events and trends in Paris. As much of Debussy’s oeuvre

focuses on art song, it is possible that these songs can give us insight into Debussy’s own

philosophies as he worked along side many well-known visual artists of his time.

Through examination of scholarly literature written on Debussy and an analysis of works

of visual artists from the Impressionist, Neo-Impressionist, and Symbolist movements, in

the form of “case studies,” and of selected art songs from Debussy’s oeuvre, we will see

evidence of a gradual shift towards greater abstraction in the work and processes of these

musical and visual artists presented in a unique light.

3

Claude Debussy: The “Impressionist” Composer

Achille-Claude Debussy lived most of his creative and social life in 19th century

Paris. Born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside of Paris, in 1862, Debussy’s life began as

one of humble means. There, his parents, both of peasant descent, managed a china shop.

In 1870, war broke between France and Germany, known as the Franco-Prussian War,

and Young Achille’s family decided it best to retreat to the southern coast of France and

to move in with his aunt in Cannes. Unemployed and working in Paris, his father joined

the Paris Commune and was summarily imprisoned for his activism, all the while Achille

had been transferred to the care of Paul Verlaine’s mother-in-law. While living in

Cannes, the young Debussy had began his piano studies, and in spite of the Commune

and all of the disruptions in his family’s life, two years later, in 1872, Claude Debussy

entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of ten.1

While having accomplished the feat of being accepted into the Conservatoire,

young Debussy now had to find his way in the French academic world of classical music.

Not having had a formal education before entering the Conservatoire, Debussy,

possessing a “wilful and experimental nature,”2 did not let this perceived hindrance hold

him back nor his conflicts with teachers. He questioned teachers constantly and

consistently, “already challenging the rigid teachings and conventional harmonies of the

day.”3 He wanted to understand what he was learning and why what he was learning

supported the status quo of the time. Debussy did not want to just follow what others told

1 François Lesure and Roy Howat. "Debussy, Claude." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford

University Press, accessed March 6, 2014,

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/07353. 2 Simon Tresize, 2003. The Cambridge Companion to Debussy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

27. 3 Mary McAuliffe, 2011. Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy,

Clemenceau, and Their Friends. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 59.

4

him he should do. But in order to see any success at the Conservatoire, within the

boundaries set by the Academie, Debussy ended up conforming and following the rules

to win.4 After 12 years of study, in 1884, young Debussy finally won the Academie des

Beaux-Arts’ Prix de Rome, a competition that since 1803 awarded a young composer

with a period of study in Rome.5 For the young composer who won, the Prix de Rome

was the ticket to a potential career and with this prize Debussy left Paris in the summer of

1884 for a chance to study music in Rome, one of the greatest capitals of art for any

artist, visual or musical.

In spite of winning, young Debussy remained unhappy. While still in Rome,

Debussy was already receiving negative reviews, and in a critique of ‘Printemps’ in 1887,

the Academie found fault: they complained that the young composer had “a pronounced

tendency—too pronounced—towards an exploration of the strange. One has the feeling

of musical colour exaggerated to the point where it causes the composer to forget the

importance of precise construction and form. It is strongly to be hoped that he will guard

against this vague impressionism, which is one of the most dangerous enemies of truth in

works of art.”6 Basically, the Academie felt the need to reprimand Debussy in order to

subdue the threat his ideas and his music posed to the preservation of the institution’s

teachings and traditions, the “rigid mould” in which Debussy could never “cast” his

4 Tresize, 28. 5 David Gilbert. "Prix de Rome." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press,

accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/40632. 6 Paul Roberts, 2008. Claude Debussy. London: Phaidon Press, 43.

5

music.7 After three long years of study8 Debussy left Rome and returned to Paris in

1887.

Two years later9 Debussy was living back home with his parents, in the thick of

Parisian culture, the Academie’s sharp criticism of ‘Printemps’ behind him, but

struggling to discover his own, unique identity “with which to face the adult world.”10

Though a poor, young composer, Debussy spent his days in the cafes and bookshops of

Paris with visual artists and writers of the emerging avant-garde.11 He hung out at the

Chat Noir, a “hotspot of political radicalism” and “artistic experimentation,”12 and visited

galleries and museums, even the Louvre, experiencing the various, current, and popular

trends in visual art of the day. As far as work, Debussy began attending the salons,

“those elegant and intimate private gatherings that during these last years of the century

offered a vibrant market for piano music and songs,”13 hosted by various acquaintances,

and for the salons, Debussy produced many of the piano pieces and art songs which

continue to define his career long after his death.

As much as Debussy has been acclaimed for his piano music, his art songs, or

melodies, have proven, through their popularity in performance and scholarly analysis, to

have been just as an important part of his oeuvre. Debussy began writing melodies, a

7 Leon Botstein, “Beyond the Illusions of Realism: Painting and Debussy’s Break with Tradition,” 150.

From Debussy and his World, ed. Jane Fulcher. Debussy wrote, in 1885, at age 23: “I don’t think I’ll ever

be able to cast my music in a rigid mould …” 8 While studying in Rome, Debussy referred to Villa Medici, where he stayed, as a “prison.” Robert

Orledge, "Debussy, Claude." The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University

Press, accessed August 8, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/opr/t114/e1846. 9 Not much is known about the two years in Debussy’s life after he returned to Paris from studies in Rome.

Roberts, 72. 10 Roberts, 72. 11 McAuliffe, 200. 12 Laura Anne Kalba, “Hearing Voices: A Study of the Soundscape and Visual Culture of Debussy’s Paris,”

from Debussy’s Paris: Art, Music, & Sounds of the City (Linda Muehlig, Smith College Museum of Art,

2012), 16. 13 Ibid., 201.

6

term used to describe all piano-accompanied songs with French texts,14 while studying at

the Conservatoire and continued to write in this particular genre throughout most of the

rest of his life. From his first published song, Nuit d’etoiles, in 180015 to his last in 1916,

one only has to listen to a sampling of songs from throughout his career to get a sense of

the depths towards which his style strove and the paths he chose to pursue away from

those forms and devices of the Academie. Because of the divergent and dynamic nature

of Debussy’s melodies, they can possibly serve as subjects through which to explore the

relationships of his life and music with those movements of Impressionism, Neo-

Impressionism, and Symbolism in the visual arts.

Throughout Debussy’s career and since his death, listeners and critics of his

music have attempted to define where exactly Debussy’s music fit in. They have tried to

find its limits, its boundaries, to label it, to put it into boxes. From the Academie’s

warning and discouragement of Debussy’s “vague impressionism” in 1887 to several

years later, in 1894, when the composer was “first publicly compared” to the

Impressionists, fatefully stamping him as “Debussy, the composer, an ‘Impressionist,’”16

critics and scholars began, slowly, to utilize such terms already “defined” within the

public sphere. Since then, countless students of music history have learned about this

artist of multiple and diverse influences as “Claude Debussy, the ‘Impressionist’

composer” and countless scholars have debated—some quite fervently—in academic

journals of both art and music about the “true” nature of Debussy’s music. What was

14 Graham Johnson and Richard Stokes, 2000. A French Song Companion. New York: Oxford University

Press, ix. The authors describe the melodie as the “younger and more serious sibling of chanson,” a type of

song of a “lighter, more popular nature (ix).” 15 Ibid, 93. 16 Paul Roberts, 1996. Images: The Piano Music of Claude Debussy. Portland: Amadeus Press, 127.

7

Debussy? Was he an Impressionist, or not? Would he have better fit in with the Neo-

Impressionists or the Symbolists than the Impressionists? Or was Debussy any of these

things at all? Over the next three chapters, we will explore what it meant to be a part of

the movements of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Symbolism, and will look at

well-known, acclaimed artists like Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, and Odilon Redon as

specific “case studies” within each of these movements in order to better understand what

visual artists were experiencing, personally, and how they dealt with the powerful

institutions and currents of thought that permeated Parisian art throughout the last half of

the 19th century. The problem of defining Debussy leads us, next, to the Impressionist

movement and to a major figure of this movement, Claude Monet.

8

CHAPTER 2

IMPRESSIONISM AND MONET

In the mid-nineteenth century the “Impressionist” movement challenged the status

quo of visual art, and Claude Monet, as a founder and major figure, helped in leading a

group of artists who broke conventions and altered rules of the Academie and the Salon.

Living from 1840 until 1926, Monet’s career began as a student of the Academie, but just

as the modernization of Paris was taking hold Monet joined a group of artists who, like

him, saw the world a little differently and desired to express their vision through

compositional techniques that eventually led to “modern” art. Through his emphasis on

color17, his focus on natural light, and in his anti-Academic stance, Claude Monet acted

as a catalyst for change within the art world and the “Impressionist” movement, helping

to drive visual art towards the “modern.” Found at the cusp of Monet’s first transition

towards modernity, his Impression, Sunrise, from 1972, currently in the Musée

Marmottan Monet in Paris, France, could be seen as representative of his early career as

painter yet leaning towards full Impressionism, and will serve, in this discussion, to

highlight the ideals that went into his work.

Impression, Sunrise, was the noted “dawn” of the “Impressionist” movement, at

least in name. Shown in the very first exhibition of the Anonymous Society of Painters,

9

Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. in 1974, two years after its completion, its unfavorable

review by Louis Leroy—criticism that it was merely an “impression,” a sketch,

unfinished at best18—as “legend”19 has it, coined the term “Impressionist,” a name that, at

first objectionable, was gradually accepted by the Salon rebels with great pride.20 This

critical work epitomizes the early technique of Monet and that favored by the other

“Impressionists.” Through this “impression,” Monet delivers the aesthetic of the

Impressionists-to-be as well as that of his own special style, involving natural subjects—

landscapes, seascapes, etc.—playing with light and dark, bright and pastel colors, and a

lack of definitive line.

As for many of his works, Monet turned to nature for inspiration, especially that

found close to home. Monet has been described “an astute observer of natural

phenomena,”21 and his commitment to plein-air painting, sitting outside and creating art

in natural, direct light, has been seen as a defining characteristic. Painted on the seacoast

of the town of Le Havre, Impression, Sunrise depicts sailboats, among other ships, out in

the early morning, at the peak of sunrise—the beginning of the workday. Daybreak, hazy

blue clouds linger, covering a pinkish sky of a bright, orange sun rising, reflected across

the lightly rippling blue water, where a couple sailboats pass by, already starting their

day, among the shadows of larger ships. For Monet, his priority as an artist was to serve

18 Samu, Margaret. "Impressionism: Art and Modernity". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/imml/hd_imml.htm

(October 2004). 19 Tucker, Paul. "The First Impressionist Exhibition and Monet’s Impression, Sunrise: A Tale of Timing,

Commerce and Patriotism." Art History 7, no. 4 (1984): 470. 20 Kalitina, Nina, and Nathalia Brodskaia. 2011. Claude Monet. New York: Parkstone Press, 83. 21 McNamara, Carole. “Monet’s Vetheuil Paintings: Site, Subject, and Debacles,” from Monet at Vetheuil:

The Turning Point (1998), Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 72.

10

truth,22 which meant looking for that “verifiable”23 truth in nature, in the intersections

between nature and the activities of man, and his plein-air technique served as “not an

absolute, but a relative conception”24—not “copying nature”25—rather, an approximate

translation in color, interpreting “through the eyes … of the ordinary man, revealing the

world of his feelings,”26 within a swiftly-changing industrialized Paris, studying and

painting those “facets of nature … close and familiar to man.”27 Like the other

Impressionists, Monet “freed” himself from “traditional subjects”28 by painting

contemporary French life—early morning to night, from the coast to the city—in

completely new ways.

The new ways through which Monet depicted the new Paris and the countryside

of France involved experimentation with color, line, and light never before seen in the

Academic art of the Salon. “Painting meant color”29 to Monet, and using only color, no

line, color lent itself to “impression.” He used color in ways that captured those found in

the world around him, all of the shades of nature, blending, fusing together the way they

do in real life. In Impression, Sunrise, shades of blue and pink dominate the scene.

Color defines the sea, the sky, the sun—the rippling of the water, the reflection of the

rising sun, the pink of dawn trying to break through lingering hazy clouds, the floating

ships in the distance. And with color, a “microstructure of color, texture, and rhythm”

was formed, elements that found “a life of their own.”30 Dashes of darker blue indicate

22 Kalitina, 47. 23 Rust, 18. 24 Herbert, 178. 25 Schmidt, 32-3. 26 Kalitina and Brodskaia, 64. 27 Kalitina and Brodskaia, 63. 28 Brown, 20. 29 Brown, 24. 30 Rust, 18.

11

where the water has been disturbed by the boats on their way out to sea, where it ripples

in contrast to where it is calm.

Monet’s blending and use of color furthermore gives us a sense of light. The

study of the effects of light on various forms, especially outdoors, was a special focus of

his work in particular. With each work he attempted to capture the moment of particular

scene,31 like that of working men taking their boats out at the break of dawn. The

reflection of the rising sun sparkles in the water, the reflections of sparkling light

signified by strategic dashes of white, dissipating with distance. The larger ships in the

background block the sun’s rays, murky shadows taking form in the water.

This attention to the workings of light, together with true color without lines,

transforms Monet’s work from merely “impressions” or effects of light to “pure

reflections,”32 holding a mirror to the world, to nature, to daily life. Impression, Sunrise,

is, therefore, not just representation, but includes a commentary on living life. The small

boats in the foreground, while attracting the viewer’s eye, are not the true focus of the

story; they are merely actors, like the dawning sun or the resting ships in the background,

in the midst of the greater workings and balances of nature. Through abstractions of

color, Monet tells a story of the transience of life and time and light, of life ever-moving,

ever-breathing, ever-changing, attempting time and again to harness one fleeting moment

of the infinite number that make up a day.

What could these things tell us about Monet within the Impressionist movement

and his view of the world through his art? Monet’s artistry, in the beginning, was

cultivated in the Classical-dominated setting of an Academie favoring historical,

31 Rust, 17. 32 Rust, 18.

12

religious, and mythological subjects, and the “Old Masters.”33 Yet, by the early 1860s

Monet found himself, along with other artist acquaintances, searching for something

different, rejecting the strict and narrow ideas of the Salon and “academic clichés,” and

looking for a new identity outside the boundaries of the Salon.34 But this search was

difficult:

“By no means all young artists find their distinctive creative personality at an

early stage. Some can spend years finding themselves as tradition holds them in

thrall, inducing a continual sense of dissatisfaction, and Monet did not completely

escape such feelings.”35

Still, Monet and others continued the “struggle for new ideals,”36 and Monet found

himself ever searching for the true and the authentic for the rest of his life.

In representing truth on the canvas, Monet’s process followed a philosophy

focused on capturing the simplicity and the evanescent qualities he witnessed while

sitting outside, painting. In discussing his plein-air technique, Monet “felt that the

vitality of outdoor sketches suffered from transfer to studio compositions.”3738 For nature

represented an “inventiveness,” spontaneity,39 his ideal included a nature ephemeral,

passing by, in motion, temporality in the blending of color—an “apprehension of the

external world as a succession of momentary shocks of color, each of which is threatened

with loss by the inexorable movement of time”40—and man was only one small part of

33 Roe, 8. 34 Kalitina, Nina. 2004. Claude Monet. London: Grange Books, 13. 35 Kalitina and Brodskaia, 64. 36 Kalitina (2004), 13. 37 Herbert, 177. 38 McNamara. “In fact, Monet did work up his paintings indoors, bringing the initial “impression” into

greater finish and adjusting the chromatic and color balances within the work.” p. 72. 39 Herbert, 304. 40 Rust, 21.

13

the system, “simply one of the indispensable elements of the changing world, without

which its harmony would be disrupted.”41

In an urban, increasingly industrialized 19th century Paris, seemingly to be in

constant flux, Monet and others looked to nature as a retreat. As much as Monet focused

on painting nature, the subject matter he selected was still less important than the

application or process.42 He stepped outdoors to sketch, out in the field, life as he saw it,

and then went back inside, to his studio, to rework his observations, adding the special

touches characteristic of his style, the compositional devices to give the “impression” of

spontaneity.43 Like other Impressionists, he was not concerned with the “correctness”44

expected by the Academie, the shiny, finished product meant to tell the audience what to

think, to understand; instead, he left them the “responsibility of interpretation,”45 so that

they could decide, on their own, what a scene of ships on the coast of Le Havre, under

sunrise, meant to them. Monet, in his “new role of one who bears witness to

contemporary realities,”46 brought forth, in a way never before seen by the audiences and

artists of France, a point of view that attempts to objectively present the realities of life

and the lessons that can be found in nature in a rapidly changing world.

41 Kalitina, 13. 42 Rust, 21. 43 Rust, 18. 44 Brown, 20. 45 Rust, 19. 46 Rust, 19.

14

CHAPTER 3

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM AND SEURAT

Georges Seurat was not a big talker. Quoted from a letter to Signac in August of

1888, “Je ne parle … pas beaucoup” (“I do not talk … very much”), this expression

written in the margins47 to his fellow artist-friend was not an overstatement. Quiet and

reserved throughout much of his life, especially noted throughout his career, critics,

audience members, and admirers of his work were left to wonder: what was he doing?

Where was all of this going? What was he even thinking? This artist of the famous

expression “Art is Harmony”—harmony with a capital ‘H’—asked of Impressionism

things that seemed contrary to its nature. Seurat followed a seemingly “scientific” color

theory that led him to create and define a completely new process, Pointillism; he

explored new realities and new ways of looking at reality; and he sought to break down

barriers between Art, the sensitive artist, the hard-working proletariat, and the effects of

the processes of light—all with little dots of paint. While Pointillism was much more

than just little dots of paint placed in particular ways, examining a post-1886 work of

Seurat’s—like The Channel at Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe (1890, Indianapolis

Museum of Art) or The Eiffel Tower (1889, Legion of Honor, San Francisco) or even La

Parade (1887-88, The Metropolitan Museum of Art)—can show us one artist’s attempts

47 Smith, Paul. 1997. Seurat and the Avant-Garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1, 168.

15

to bring together nature, human beings, art and the processes that lead to his

understanding of the world through its creation on canvas in the latter part of his career.

“Dots, dots, and more dots” could be used to describe the “color theory” for

which Georges Seurat seems to be so well known, but that would be a gross

misunderstanding of what Seurat set out to achieve and of what he himself understood his

process to be, in spite of what everyone else thought it was or what it meant. For only a

small part of his career, from around 1884 until his death in 1891 at the age of 31, did he

even follow this theory’s prescriptions—and, in all seriousness, what was its role?

Receiving his education at a municipal art school in Paris and, following, a classical

education at the Ecole48 Seurat strayed and became a student of the Impressionists,

learning from them, his contemporaries, showing his art alongside theirs in their famous,

and sometimes scandalous, exhibitions.

Seurat’s earlier works, such Lisière de boise au printemps completed between

1882 and 1883 or his 1885 Ruines à Grandcamp (both at the Musée d’Orsay) represented

the Impressionists well, with their pastel colors, and contrast significantly with those

1886-and-after works he was most known for, those that have garnered the most critical

attention. His Lucerne, Saint-Denis, also known as Fields of Alfalfa, Saint-Denis or Field

of Poppies, an 1885, pre-Grande Jatte work (National Gallery of Scotland, oil on

canvas), occured within the beginnings of his Divisionist technique. Its “pure colour”

and “application of paint in small, organised brushstrokes,”49 these strokes still differ

greatly, larger and seemingly more spontaneous than the measured and deliberate strokes

of later works, giving off a much different overall aesthetic vibe, placing this piece still, if

48 McAuliffe, 153. 49 Christine Dixon. http://nga.gov.au/exhibition/turnertomonet/Detail.cfm?IRN=167490

16

not within, near the realm of the Impressionistic. But Seurat was “not satisfied with the

spontaneous, drifting, color-soaked vision of nature” of Impressionism. He strove to

organize his sensations for control—but for what: a control of nature, of his emotions, his

thoughts?

Seurat ended up rejecting the colors of the classic tradition, of his training and

earliest influences, going so far as to reject the so-called “scientific” treatises on color50

so popular at the time to which many attribute the source of his process, the unique

characteristics of his works. His art, his “Neo-Impressionism,” was termed the

“scientific” impressionism of the “Impressionisms,” but was it meant to be “scientific” as

we understand the term today, or as they understood it then? How did Seurat understand

and apply the theories by with which he became so engrossed, in his writings and in his

artistic process? Exactly where was he trying to go? Away from Impressionism, from

anything anyone else was doing at the time? Was he really trying to bring “science” into

Art, and if so, did it work? And, last, what separated Seurat’s art from that of the

Impressionists?

In May of 1886 Seurat shocked the world—that is, the art world of Paris. At the

Eighth Impressionist Exhibition, along with Signac, Pissarro and his son, Seurat

introduced La Grande Jatte to the critics and scholars in attendance, and, voila, “instant

notoriety.”51 At this very last exhibition of the Impressionists, even his own colleagues

were somewhat taken aback.52 As Herbert puts it, this painting was a “scandalous

eruption within Impressionism, a deliberate challenge to its first practitioners,53 and

50 Rich, 3. 51 Herbert, 22. 52 Rich, 2. 53 Herbert 22.

17

several months later, in September, the term “Neo-Impressionism” appeared in print, 54

written by art critic Félix Fénéon,55 for the first time. No more was Seurat merely an

Impressionist, as “Impressionists thrived on improvisation and a suitably spontaneous

handling that gave objects, not just air and water, a fluttery and tremulous

insubstantiality.” La Grande Jatte, as well as his other, especially his later works, did not

fit this description at all.

The glimmering colors of Seurat’s post-1886 works could be described as

tremulous yet they are not the spontaneous, improvisational-like realizations of the

natural world in the same manner as those works of the other Impressionists, or those of

an earlier stage in his career. A work like The Channel at Gravelines, Petit Fort Philippe

may contain an essence of this “insubstantiality” but it takes the idea of human sensation

in a totally new direction, breaking down the artist’s perceptive impulses so we may

better understand the “way[s] in which knowledge is built up and the way[s] in which

objective reality can be most usefully represented.”56 Colleagues, Signac and the

Pissarros all had taken up Divisionism, showing their own works at the exhibition, but to

whom did they give all the credit? All gave one artist his due: Seurat, the “leader of a

new and rebellious form of Impressionism.”57

To Seurat he was not a “Neo-Impressionist” but—though silent on everything

else—a self-professed “chromo-luminarist.”58 By 1884, Seurat had developed

54 Hutton, 17. 55 Amory, Dita. "Georges Seurat (1859–1891) and Neo-Impressionism". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art

History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/seni/hd_seni.htm (October 2004). 56 Ellen Wardwell Lee, 1990. Seurat at Gravelines: The Last Landscapes. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 62. 57 Herbert, Robert L. 2004. Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte. Berkeley and Los Angeles:

University of California Press, 22. 58 Hutton, 17.

18

‘divisionism,’59 also known as ‘Pointillism’ or ‘petit-point.’60 Divisionism—or Seurat’s

preferred “chromo-luminarism”—was, basically, the “division” of colors, of light into,

not just a million tiny “dots” of color, but the essential particles that, to Seurat and others

following this theory, coalesce into the vivid, dynamic, animated elements that, through

interpretation of the eye, form the brilliant macrocosm around us we then perceive and

analyze into disparate parts. This “aesthetic of the scientific,” obviously a ‘scientific’

Impressionism, focused on simplified, geometrical figures with simple contours61—what

power an outline could have, outlines inspired by Japanese prints62—where the tiny

points became more than dots, they were, as the theory goes, connected on a greater level

to the very edges of the painting, “coincident points” that created a relation between the

surface pattern and the picture frame, doing so with variety and his characteristic

discretion.63

On a deeper level, Divisionism was an outlet for Seurat’s emotionally

observational ponderings, “a stern, intellectual method of dividing his sensations in front

of nature by analysis and a final synthesis,”64 of uniting what he saw and what he felt

through a language he understood, to achieve insight into the processes of light and its

interaction with the mind in allowing one to comprehend the world around him and

derive meaning from it. Starkly different from the Lisière de boise au printemps, the

sequence of colors and hypnotic effects of The Channel at Gravelines, Petit Fort

Philippe, one of Seurat’s last landscapes, reveal a new understanding of Impressionism—

59 McAuliffe, 153. 60 Rich, 4. 61 Prak, 367. 62 Prak, 369. 63 Prak, 372 and 375. 64 Rich, 4.

19

if Seurat even considered it that—that give the illusion of actions, applications of paint

spontaneously scientific and measured with care, a mirage, a color breakdown.

With “[La Grande Jatte’s] well-measured forms and technique,” it can be “easy to

think of him as master planner who applied rules in a mechanical way, leaving emotion

behind.”65 But his other works, like the 1990 landscape at Gravelines metioned,

surprisingly refute this way of thinking about his works and his practice. Seurat’s aim

was to find completely new ways of seeing reality, being “deeply interested in the

modernization and rationalization of perception and aesthetic response.”66 He produced

studies for each of his major works, several for each, even, and was a proponent of plein-

air painting, yet he continued from outdoors to indoors to finish his creations in the

studio, 67 and the influence of the Impressionists on his choice of subjects68 shows, the

modern scenes of Parisian leisure and luxury, of humans interacting with nature, nature

as sole focus.

From his creation of Divisionism Seurat diverged from the Impressionists,

“writing” a new aesthetic language, within an increasingly “intellectual” society that,

since the industrial revolution, since the most recent and sizeable technological and

scientific shift from rural and agricultural to modern and urban, was continuing, as the

Impressionists did, to question every line of thought, every ideology that came before,

refusing to believe what they were told and taught blindly.

The 1880s were a time when thinkers and researchers from a wide variety of

fields were probing the structure of perception, the relation between mind and

65 Herbert, 24. 66 Lee, 61. 67 McAuliffe, 152-3. 68 Prak, 375.

20

sensation, and how the external world could be most usefully represented. These

included psychologists, philosophers, poets, physiologists, philologists, and

painters. It was a period when the earlier certainties of positivism and realism

about the reliability of perception and of realist forms of representation were

being profoundly questioned.69

Breaking down our perceptions of the world, our reality, visually, may have been

a way for Seurat to break down barriers, socially. Here, a major post-La Grande Jatte,

post-1886 work has been discussed to some depth because:

“It is only after the Eighth Impressionist Exhibition that Seurat’s possible

associations with wagnerisme and music, with Charles Henry’s theories of the

psychology of art, and with anarchism can be appropriately discussed.”70

Seurat was thought to have believed in anarchist socialism, even though there is no

written record linking him,71 only writings of his that scholars such as Eisenman think

may contain allusions to ideals and snippets of thoughts that hint of this rebellious stream

of intellectual fervor. The ideal of Harmony, Seurat’s belief in the “universal human

right to aesthetic pleasure”72 drove his work. What was or is Harmony, though, in visual

terms and how was it supposed to aid in the breaking down of aesthetic barriers so that all

people, not just the intellectual elite, not just the members of the Academy, not just those

who make and enforce the “rules” of Art, could fulfill a universal human need.

If the Impressionists practiced representation of nature, Seurat’s style questioned

what representation was, what it meant—if what we see is actually real. It was “his

69 Lee, 61. 70 Herbert, 24. 71 Eisenman, 211. 72 Eisenman, 214.

21

conscious development of an antirepresentational formal thinking immanent to an

emerging modern society based on abstract value and on modes of mechanical mass

reproduction”73 that led him to diverge so substantially from the path the Impressionists

had tread, his “interest in turning reality into an abstract pattern.”74 Looking closer at

Gravelines, Petit Fort Phillipe and then taking a couple of steps back we see the parts,

miniscule, and then the radiant whole.

From both perspectives, it is truly a painting “for the eyes,” a veneration of color,

of light, of interactions the viewer doesn’t consciously realize. It can be a puzzle: the

Gravelines were real, Petit Fort Phillipe was/is a real place, and Seurat sketched on the

shore, documenting it all for us. “Making a painting … can reveal aspects of the self, or

the world, that were previously hidden.”75 Closer, the mechanics of sight; further away,

the vibration of particles in unity, the dazzling, pulsing life in a moment made visible,

evident. Though Seurat was not a big talker, it is possible that he was giving us a subtle

nudge, so that we could ask ourselves: what is real?

73 Lee, 61. 74 Prak, 367. 75 Smith, 5.

22

CHAPTER 4

SYMBOLISM AND REDON

“I have made an art according to myself. I have done it with eyes open to the

marvels of the visible world and, whatever anyone might say, always careful to obey the

laws of nature and life,”76 wrote Odilon Redon in his writings, titled To Myself: Notes on

Life, Art and Artists. Redon, the infamous “Master of Mystery” among those self-

proclaimed Symbolists, produced works of subjects sometimes seemingly otherworldy

and, in the last part of his life, of bright color, combining the real and the fantastic and

placing an emphasis on the importance of emotion, yet with careful observation, such as

can be seen in works like Trees on a Yellow Background (1901), found currently in the

Musee d’Orsay, and Flower Clouds (c. 1903), residing in the Art Institute of Chicago’s

museum, while avoiding and refuting the words of critics attempting to tie him or his

work to any one category, “artistic” theory, or even the “Symbolist” camp for that matter.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Symbolism tended to stand for

a “sweeping away the jagged and gritty elements of Naturalism and Realism in favor of a

distant but approachable ideal,” and this ideal, to the avowed Symbolists was “swathed in

mystery, hidden in shadows, and attainable only through images permeated with

symbolic meaning.”77 Whether or not Redon actually agreed with the philosophies of the

76 Redon, 7. 77 McAuliffe, 230.

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Symbolist movement and those involved, many of his works were borne of artistic beliefs

that sought out the Truths of nature, the inherent essences, of the “visible world,” and that

which cannot quite be reached, described, touched upon of that visually imperceptible to

the sense, probing the depths of the soul through great color or great darkness.

The year of 1880 saw the appearance of a group of visual artists who referred to

themselves as “Symbolists” and marked, as well, Redon’s journey into color. From years

of works in charcoal, lithographs in black and white, Redon began to move from strict

darkness to works in pastels, watercolors, and oil paints that year, 78 creating vibrant

scenes, some filled with colors spanning the spectrum, others leaning towards

monochromatic. Redon’s Trees in a Yellow Background (Arbres sur un fond jaune) is

one such example of the latter, with a narrow floral landscape—if one could even

describe it as “landscape”—flooded, overwhelmed with golden light, light filling every

space, between every branch and flower stretching to the sky, every space on the canvas

not occupied by leaf or petal. “Unmodulated color” was a popular device used by the

Symbolists, and in this work, for the softness the gold gives to the scene, it has a

commanding presence.

Redon’s Flower Clouds, created in 1903 and the focus of the rest of this chapter’s

discussion, is an example of the earlier, a pastel work on paper depicting two figures,

“perhaps two saintly women,” in a small sailboat, “a dreamlike skiff,” living “a timeless

journey” under a “fantastic, phosphorescent sea and sky,”79 an unbelievably multi-

colored, fanciful, phantasmagorical sky full of yellows, blues, and reds. Compared to sky

above, the figures in the boat are bland, looking opaque, maybe even translucent, sailing

78 Berger, 85. 79 Entry, Essential Guide, 2013, p. 321, http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/76395.

24

through a world greatly impacted by and full of flux and metamorphosis, the world

Redon set out to depict and chose to through color.80 The great Flower Clouds of

Redon’s sky, one can imagine them bursting, blooming like fireworks, transforming,

changing from one vibrant color to another, and then fading back into dark. So striking

their reflections on the surface of the open water one has trouble telling where the

horizon exists.

With this, Redon explored the depths of nature, and of the human connection with

nature, through color. But exactly how does Redon embody the essence of nature and the

depths of the mind through color? How does he utilize color in not merely representing

or mimicking nature but tell of subjective Truths, of universals? What could some

themes across Redon’s oeuvre be? “The transformation of nature into dream-like images,

suggesting indefinite states of mind and expressed in sumptuous textures, remained his

central concern, and the exploratory freedom with which he investigated the suggestive

potential of colour,”81 coupled with the careful observation he found so important to his

art, helped him to reach new depths of the real and the personal in visual form.82

Joining the real with the fantastic was a specialty of Redon’s, whether in black

and white or sumptuous color. Aesthetic fragments of the Romantic movement made a

comeback in the second half of the 19th century, with artists introducing dreams, the

“supernatural,” the “mystical” and the “occult,” and the inner workings of the mind83 to

their audiences. With these elements and theories from the then-present and on-going

80 Hauptman, 40. 81 Richard Hobbs, from Grove Art Online, Source: Oxford University Press,

http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=4840. 82 Include information about chiaroscuro. http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/around-

redon.html#c52117. 83 Hauptman, 22.

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Decadence movement, such as the rejection of the idea that art has an obligation to

“represent reality faithfully” and that reality goes through transformation,84 a reality that

it is dynamic and ever-changing, the Symbolists, especially Redon, found their artistic

ground in exploring levels of realities, without and within the human body.

Redon explored a variety of subjects, verging on the border of multiple realities,

those between reality and non-reality, or the fantastic: religious subjects, like the Buddha;

those of the mythological, such as Pandora, Pegasus, Mephistopheles. He painted

portraits of patrons, but even these were not one’s standard 18th-century portrait; his

subject, within the borders of the canvas, found him or herself, like Baronne de Domecy,

off in a small part of the world, of a strange, floating world, without depth, one of

Redon’s imagination, sometimes surrounded by large, blossoming flowers and always by

a cosmos of color.

Even seemingly innocent and straightforward nature scenes are infused with the

fantastical. Redon merges the natural world with that of the human psyche, throwing

together nature and humans and searching for the places where the two meet, to “envision

something far outside of reality.”85 When it came to his art, “[i]nstead of choosing

between imagination and mimesis, fantasy and nature,” Redon chose both. He “deployed

one to get to the other: he closely examined nature in inventing his fantasies, he carefully

observed reality as a way to take flights of the imagination.”86

Believing the Realist theories to be too “narrow,” he expanded on Realism-with-

a-capital-‘R,’ giving the art scene of late 19th century Paris a new definition, taking his

84 Hauptman, 23. 85 Hauptman, 49. 86 Hauptman, Jodi. 2005. Beyond the Visible: The Art of Odilon Redon. New York: The Museum of

Modern Art, 24.

26

ideas from the “most fertile sources” of artistic reflection: “thought, inspiration, genius—

in a word—and all that it reveals to us.”87 In Flower Clouds, one hardly notices the two

figures in the boat for the polychromatic sky. In a way, despite all the technological and

intellectual advances of the current century, Redon and his figures in the sailboat submit

to the wonders of the natural world, to the glorious, grandness of all that surrounds them,

to all that they understand and to all they still do not.

In a catalogue note from July 1910, Redon remarked, “I address those who

surrender docilely, without the help of sterile explanations to the secret and mysterious

laws of sensitivity and of the heart.”88 For the length of his career Redon relied on his

inner nature, emphasizing instinct and intuition above imagination, trusting them and

letting these guide his art much more than the fancies of his mind. Many Symbolist

artists “shut themselves away inside their inner worlds” in order to “discover … the

realities of the unconscious” through feeling and the “exquisite refinements of

sensation.”89 Stressing the personal and the subjective, especially the use of dreams, at

the same time, from the same note, Redon spoke of an artist who “scrutinizes,”90 who

peers at the world, at nature, with such inquisitive eyes, so as to try to glimpse its very

essence, to create an art “always supported by observation,” believing that “the formless

and the shaded must be juxtaposed with the carefully described.”91 His art was a

“suggestive art,”92 an art, with all of the observation and scrutiny, that represented the

87 Hauptman, 32. 88 Redon, 95-6. 89 Hauptman, 23. 90 Redon, 95-6. 91 Hauptman, 34. 92 Hauptman, 27.

27

ephemerality and feelings of existing within the world, among nature, rather than the

“concrete” details of what things are or were.

So, how does Flowers Clouds reflect the scrutiny, the observation Redon utilized

and so believed in? How does this work embody the balance between Redon’s belief in

art from one’s deep, emotional core and that of art from careful observation of nature, the

physical world, through the artist’s human eye? How is this work a “suggestive art”?

“Art is a flower which opens freely outside of all rules …”93 and Redon was an

artist who subverted, freely and candidly, the rules. Not so popular at first, Redon took

an “in-between path” that eventually won him admirers and supporters.94 While the

Impressionists were his contemporaries, a part of his generation, there was but little in

common between the two.95 He worked on his art, in isolation,96 between the theories

and philosophies of groups to which he did not quite see himself, or his art, belonging.

Even when he finally received recognition and the subjects, colors, artistic beliefs, and

technique of his works became a source for the declared Symbolists, he continued to stay

away from their formulas and theories.97

Still, Redon continued to be misunderstood by critics who repeatedly failed to

really see his art for their dire need to define it, or as Redon put it: “… they did not see

that there was no need to define anything, to understand anything, to imitate anything, to

be precise about anything, because everything that is sincerely and gently new—just as

beauty—carries its meaning in itself.”98 Other artists saw this misunderstanding, too, as

93 Redon, 64. 94 Hauptman, 24. 95 Berger, 10. 96 Rewald, 224. 97 Rewald, 225. 98 Rewald, 219.

28

Gauguin once commented, “Odilon Redon, that extraordinary artist whom they persist in

not understanding, will they someday give him his due?”99 Redon and his Flower

Clouds, and his numerous other mysterious works in shadow and color, carries meaning,

not through application of terms and labels, but through witnessing nature, beholding its

transience, the incomprehensible, and listening to what it tells your inner mind and self.

99 Rewald, 225.

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CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

“Modernity is the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent,”100 Charles Baudelaire

expresses the very sense of an idea many artists, musicians, poets, and writers strove to

explain, to depict, and to describe in the last half of the 19th century. The French poet and

writer, the “Father of Modernity,” in his essay, “The Painter of Modern Life,” published

in 1864, summarizes, even in this one thought, so succinctly a sentiment, for which artists

of all kinds gathered around tables in cafes, convened in bookstores, and united—or

didn’t—upon common ideological grounds into movements such as those discussed in

the previous chapters—Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Symbolism.

This “modernity,” it was an ideal for which one was always grasping yet was ever

out of one’s reach. For the moment one began to perceive of its forms, its texture, its

color, in that moment it was already gone. It was an elusive goal, alluring to

industrialists and artists alike, the ultimate sophistication of technology, culture, and

society. All of the artists examined here contemplated how to represent a fleeting life—

human perception—questioning reality as they searched for an ideal balance of nature

and human emotion and turning away from the bustling industrialized, “modern” cities,

while subverting the expectations their institutions laid out for them.

100 Charles Baudelaire. 1964. Painter of Modern Life. Ed. and Trans. Jonathan Mayne. London: Phaidon

Press, 13.

30

When it comes to Debussy, none of the labels, or movements, of previous

chapters are sufficient to define the work of a composer whose style drew from varied

sources of inspiration. He is better viewed as an artist who resisted all labels and shared

with his visual art contemporaries an opposition to the strict boundaries and narrow ideas

of the Academie and the Conservatoire—the overarching rule-makers of visual art and

music—and an ability to re-envision the natural world, even reality, in ways which had

never before been seen. In the following, I will examine three art songs across Debussy’s

oeuvre—Nuit d’etoiles, C’est l’extase, and La flute de Pan—from major cycles or sets of

his career, and look at how each may, or may not, reveal the ways in which Debussy

stretched limitations and the variety of artistic thought and ideas that affected his work.

Why art song? Being among Debussy’s earliest compositions, art song, a work

for voice and piano, made up the bulk of his creative output as well as his most popular

works and well-known works, even to this day. Art song combines text and music, and

as Debussy produced mélodies, or French song, throughout his career, it provides a

possible avenue for observing the imagery in which he found inspiration, over time.

Further, the voice in the 19th century “continued to be valued as a vehicle for truthful

expression”101 and human speech was seen as pure, authentic expression.102 Naturally, it

became a vehicle for poets and composers to express the heights of human emotion, its

language for artists, visual and musical, to attempt to transcend, and one-half of a genre

for this research to look at the ways in which Debussy may have shared certain artistic

101 Laura Anne Kalba. “Hearing Voices: A Study of the Soundscape and Visual Culture of Debussy’s

Paris,” from Debussy’s Paris: Art, Music, & Sounds of the City, ed. and published by Linda Muehlig, Smith

College Museum of Art, 20. 102 Kalba, 29.

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qualities with those who identified with Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and

Symbolism.

Sound is hard to describe. Its ephemeral and transient nature—what you have

heard, as soon as you think you have grasped it, it is gone. In contrast, the paintings,

drawings, and watercolors of the Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists, and Symbolists

examined earlier, exist on canvas and paper, carefully conserved in museums and still

visible and available to the human eye and mind. Music only lasts on the page; it is a

contrived representation, a culturally constructed system of symbols and signs given

meaning within and by a Euro-centered musical world; and its performance merely an

approximation of those black marks on the copy of the composer’s score.

Simon Shaw-Miller, in his book Visible Deeds of Music, does not see the

differences in visual art and music’s basic natures, though, as any kind of barrier to

interdisciplinary analysis. Shaw-Miller, instead, states this: “I begin with the premise

that there is no essential or sufficient defining difference between them, although that is

not to say that there are not necessary characterisics.” He continues on to argue that the

differences between visual art and music are only a “matter of degree, not of kind,”

meaning that visual art and music both belong to a continuum of art; therefore, the

perceived boundaries between them are open to cross-comparison. 103 How do we make

these comparisons, then? How do we talk about these two seemingly different

expressions?

These artists, their works, the critics and their critiques are a “product of an age in

which critical discourse on painting and music shared the same vocabulary,” a

103 Simon Shaw-Miller. 2002. Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage. New Haven:

Yale University Press, 5.

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vocabulary of basic elements such as line, color, tone, form, etc., and since the early

1890s there has been a search for parallels between Debussy’s music and the visual

arts104: this tradition continues today. Critics and scholars have used this common

vocabulary to critique and attempt to form connections between them. Further, we can

view art and music through shared cultural and historical contexts, examining practices,

lines of thought, and events that led to creative product.

Shaw-Miller defines for us the period of modernism as circa 1860-1960 and

within this period we find the movements of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and

Symbolism and the entirety of Debussy’s life and career. It is also this period of time that

is “marked by rapid and intense economic, social, and political transformation,” and

within this era that artists and society witnessed the formation and creation of many new

artistic movements within a relatively short period of time105 Shaw-Miller understands

that this time was

marked by an attempt to (re)establish the ‘essential identity of each branch of

cultural practice, each art form … a strong sense of censure was (is) attached to

the project: that through the ‘self evident truth’ of the ‘natural’ boundaries

between the arts, the issue becomes as much a moral one—that the arts should

only ‘concern themselves with certain formal characteristics’—as it was a merely

neutral formal requirement—that they ‘can only express certain things within

these essential borders.’

“Within the span of scarcely two decades Impressionism became a generally

accepted term in the field of musicology … hastily and carelessly brought forward in an

104 Roberts (2008), 20. 105 Muehlig, 10.

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attempt to account for the newness and strangeness of Debussy’s music.” But there are

dangers to “Debussy, the Impressionist.” Brynside, in his critique, goes on to say, “The

resistance with which the term met in its early history, the looseness with which it was so

often applied to Debussy’s music, and the failure of most of those who used it to define

precisely its meaning or its attributes”—failing to understand or define the term they

were using—should greatly concern us today, for much is at stake.”106 Many have sought

to understand Debussy’s works through painting; Botstein asks—in “Beyond the Illusions

of Realism: Painting and Debussy’s Break with Tradition”—“Was the way out of the past

shown to Debussy by the manner in which traditions and viewer expectations in painting

had been challenged successfully by contemporaries?”107 By contemporaries like Monet,

Seurat, Redon and others?

But “Impressionism” has not been the only label or category to be thrown around

so carelessly in regard to Debussy. Since Debussy’s time, other scholars and critics have

made cases for a “Debussy, the Neo-Impressionist” and, even more so, a “Debussy, the

Symbolist.” Alex Hargreaves Ashworth, in his article, “Twentieth-Century Painting: the

Approach Through Music,” from 1939, counts the ways in which Debussy was

Impressionist-like, but then turns, instead, towards Neo-Impressionism, while attempting

to refute the popular critique of “vagueness” made against Debussy’s music:

The charge of vagueness can be made against Debussy only by those who fail to

appreciate the distinction between a profound sense of design and a marked

feeling for pattern. And it is this sense of design which rather strains the analogy

106 Ronald L. Brynside. “Musical Impressionism: The Early History of the Term.” The Musical Quarterly

66, no. 4 (Oct. 1980), 536-7. 107 Botstein, 141-2.

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between Debussy and the Impressionists. But for the fact that he followed his

instinct rather than working to a theory, one might class him with the Neo-

impressionists, who developed pointillisme as a scientific system and brought

back design into painting: not for realistic but for decorative ends.

It could even be said that “Debussy, the Symbolist” has fared far better. In

Burkholder, Grout, and Palisca’s 8th Edition of A History of Western Music, there is a

paragraph devoted to his alleged Impressionist and Symbolist ties, in his music and his

life. The authors acknowledge that his music is “often called impressionist, by analogy

to the impressionist painters” and continue on to counter with: “but it is closer to

symbolism, a connection reinforced by his friendships with symbolist poets and his use of

their texts for songs and dramatic works.” The authors then briefly summarize the

characteristics other scholars and critics have written articles and books about that

connect Debussy to Symbolism and its artists.

Nuit d’etoiles (Night of stars)

Historically, Debussy’s Nuit d’etoiles could be one of Debussy’s most

“Impressionistic” pieces. With a text by Theodore de Banville, it was composed and

published in 1880 during the height of the Impressionists’ struggle with the Academie.

By 1886, Impressionism, for the most part, was a half-way acceptable form of

expression, yet it was in 1887 when the Conservatoire critiqued a piano piece of his as

consisting of “vague Impressionism” and that he possessed “a pronounced tendency …

towards an exploration of the strange.”

The piano glistens and glimmers (attributes unacceptable at the time) as if

speaking for the stars on a clear night—a representation, maybe even an “impression” of

35

this sky—while the voice stands in wonder at what she sees above. While it is possible

that Nuit d’etoiles was under a greater “Impressionistic” influence than Debussy’s later

works, in his use of nature to express deeper emotions of l’ame, the soul, do we already

see some Symbolist influences?

“Impressionist”: this term “originally summed up everything that was outrageous,

beyond the pale, and modern.”108 Roberts, in Images, thinks that there were “tendencies”

of the Impressionists technique in Debussy’s style from the very beginning. Non-

conformity and “oppose the establishment”109 ideas was part of Debussy’s whole ethos.

It was a satirical essay character, Monsieur Croche, Debussy’s alter ego, who said,

“Remain unique!”110—a sentiment that echoed opinions that the Ecole’s teaching was

“completely out of touch with the real, everyday world.”111 For it was at the Ecole, in a

conversation with his composition teacher, Debussy the student boldly told his professor,

“Music cannot be learned.”112

C’est l’extase (This is ectasy)

In C’est l’extase, the voice declares: “C’est l’extase langoureuse, c’est la fatigue

amoureuse”—“This is languorous rapture, this is amourous fatigue.” C’est l’extase

represents a considerable change in style by 1888. In a letter from June, 1885, Debussy

wrote: “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to cast my music in a rigid mould”—that he would

“always rather deal with something where the passage of events is subordinated to a

thorough and extended portrayal of human feelings.”

108 Roberts (2008), 113. 109 Roberts (2008), 115. 110 Roberts (2006), 121. 111 Roberts (2008), 116. 112 Roberts (2006), 121.

36

“That way,” he says, “I think, music can become more personal, more true to life.”

Throughout his career Debussy sought to fill the page with rich, color harmonies, pairing

them with soaring musical lines, achieving a moment of heightened emotion. Debussy,

here, uses nature and subjective feeling to further explore the depths of human emotion.

La flute de Pan (The flute of Pan)

La flute de pan, or The flute of Pan, from Debussy’s cycle Chansons de Bilitis,

published in 1899, could be the most Symbolist of these three examples. By 1893

Debussy was already spending time with the Symbolist poets in the cafes, salons, and

bookstores of Paris, and letters between Debussy and Redon tell us of their shared

“artistic sympathies.” Debussy was “searching for the Inexpressible which is the ideal of

all art”—similar to the Symbolists’ ideal—though, note, it was in 1894 when he was

publicly declared as an “Impressionist” by a critic.

It was in 1895 when he wrote this example here. Debussy’s musical writing is spare.

The vocal line is ever more so conversational-like, but still subtly expressing depths of

emotion. Most of all, the listener has no idea where the music is going—a great mystery

Debussy has given all of us.

Conclusion

What we learn here is 1) Debussy shared motivations, practices, emotions, and

ideas with the artists of these three movements with an emphasis on bringing together

nature and human emotion and perception; 2) it does not suffice to keep referring to

Debussy as the “Impressionist” composer, when his work found multiple avenues of

inspiration; and 3) labels and categorizations are only good as long as we continue to

37

question. Rather than view these movements with static beginnings and endings, we

need to understand them as dynamic, flowing progressions of ideas.

It is our tendency as human beings to define, to categorize, to label. The

“Debussy problem” provides an interesting case—and lessons—about the ways in which

we discuss the musical and visual arts. It warns us to be careful of the potential impact of

categorization made too soon. The interpretations that could be made of Debussy’s

music have been somewhat hampered by a label that continues to be debated. It

encourages us, instead, to wait and listen.

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